


Starbird

by Fanfic_is_a_sin



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: lasers-spacers-and stormtrooper aim, lofty space musings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-24
Updated: 2016-03-23
Packaged: 2018-05-28 17:22:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6338305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fanfic_is_a_sin/pseuds/Fanfic_is_a_sin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Poe Dameron has a habit of getting in over his head on important missions. When a familiar planet shows evidence of First Order activity, the Resistance's best pilot might find himself in a little more trouble than he bargained for to find out what's really going on. Luckily, Poe isn't really alone on his mission, and with some help from a good friend, he might just learn about the future of the First Order, as well as the roots of the Resistance. (Pre-movie)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Starbird

      Free fall in wild space. Seconds echoed through the asteroid field, and Poe imagined time bouncing through the hollows of the asteroid caverns, lost in a place where it didn't belong. His scanners powered down, he could only watch the squadron of TIE fighters pick through the endless, empty ghost of a horizon. Even in the serene silence of space, his mind called up the arcing scream the fighters made in normal atmosphere. They were meticulous. It was almost a shame they weren't also good. Then again, maybe that was unfair. They didn’t know who they were hunting. The canopy lit up with an emerald flash of light, and one of the rocks close to the formation's leftmost pilot crumbled and broke apart, leaking superheated stone into space. They must have gotten a blip on their scanners, probably a metal deposit or a bug in the cheap sensor array that the First Order used. They really didn't take chances, these guys. Too bad the innocent asteroid they'd decided to blast was just far enough away to turn the formation's back to him. Poe clicked his tongue.  
      
    “Bad move, boys,” he chided, thumbing a quick sequence of switches on the main control console.  
  
    The TIEs kept on in the opposite direction, following the predictable patrol pattern of First Order defensive recon tactics, closing the deal for him. His scanners flashed warnings as he closed his eyes, feeling the X-wing whir to life around him. As he took a breath, he imagined the S-foils holding just a slight tremor, the farthest manifestation of the fighter’s awakening engine. Poe opened his eyes, drumming the fingers of his right hand lightly on the scanner display screen. Lines of text began to scroll across the alerts panel.  
  
    “Yeah, I know BB-8. I just wanted to give them a fair chance, you know?”  
    His buddy’s tone was clear, even through the dry statistical advisory against waiting.  
    “You’re right,” Poe conceded, his hands finding the throttle. “Showtime.”  
  
    The X-Wing blasted forward with the lightest nudge of the throttle, its sudden and precise acceleration reminding him, once again, why the Resistance had taken to upgrading the older Rebel Alliance models, rather than phasing them out. Even the First Order’s next gen TIE fighters couldn’t match the sheer muscle behind an X-Wing. A small asteroid fragment, about the size of BB-8 bounced off of the canopy with a jarring crack.  
  
    “Whoops.”  
      
    The patrol ahead finally started to come about, no doubt picking him up on their shorter-range area scanners, rather than the directional ones they’d been sweeping the asteroid field with. He kept his finger on the trigger, eyeballing the center of the five-fighter formation. He would be the squadron leader. As the TIEs came around, flashing red text let him know that BB-8 wasn’t too thrilled with the overlapping fields of fire that the X-Wing was dead-center of.  
  
    “C’mon, buddy. Have a little faith,” Poe quipped back.  
    The next line of text made him blink.  
    “Have you been watching the rookie pilots play dejarik again?”  
  
    The fighters closed in, and Poe rolled left as the first spray of green flew past his fighter and blew a new crater into one of the larger asteroids. BB-8’s text spat out a hasty reminder that they were, in fact, being shot at.  
  
    “Don’t try to change the subject!”  
  
    Poe threw the fighter behind a group of asteroids as the distance between his X-Wing and the TIEs was eaten up by laser cannon fire and half-vaporized asteroid. BB-8 finally clicked out an affirmative.  
  
    “I thought so. Listen, you and I,” Poe jammed the throttle forward as the distance to the TIEs evaporated He lined the fighter’s nose up with the center panel of the large window that comprised the front face of the leader’s TIE. “We’re going to talk about this when we get back.”  
    Finally, he pulled the trigger, firing amethyst bolts of light right at the leader, who was already over-committed to the forward attack run. The lasers hit the window directly, its whole face flaring as the transparisteel diffused the energy and then bursting. The pressurized air inside the cockpit lit up into a brief ball of fire as the fighter cracked in two, its solar array wings falling off just enough for Poe to flip his fighter on its side and rocket through the new opening in the formation. The other pilots fired at him, but the fact that he hadn’t slowed down since his initial approach made the shots impossible, even for the best pilot. And they didn’t have the best pilot. BB-8 signaled a confirmed kill for his official record with the unofficial Resistance Starfighter Corps, adding as a side note that the maneuver was pretty stellar, for something that should have gotten them killed.  
  
    Poe followed a sharp arc around an asteroid to put him back on the remaining fighters’ tails. They could move pretty fast, but they lost a lot of maneuverability to get there, and there wasn’t fighter in the galaxy that could outrun a laser canon. He lined the shots up, starting from the left, and fired once for each TIE. One, two, three…the last one broke off, slinking behind an asteroid as Poe’s X-Wing tore through the debris of its unlucky squad mates.  
  
    “Oh, no you don’t,” Poe muttered. He was breaking for the planet, counting on speed to save him. Poe flew around the curve of the asteroid in pursuit. “Alright, BB-8, let’s burn engines here. If this guy gets back to his buddies, things are gonna get real busy, real fast. And not the fun kind of busy that ends in learning three new names the morning after you meet three new people.”  
  
    BB-8 flashed a response, advising him to start asking for people’s names sooner, with a reminder of the time he’d nearly gotten himself disintegrated by a bounty hunter looking to collect on Resistance brass.       
  
    “Don’t you think that’s a little unfair?” Poe found the TIE again, booking it for the edge of the asteroid field. “Besides, Benak was a nice guy, after we sorted things out.”  
    BB-8 left him with a probing pause, before insinuating that Poe thought a lot of guys were nice.  
Poe lined the TIE up for a shot.  
    “Okay, that’s fair.”  
  
    As he pulled the trigger, an asteroid floated just a little too close to the panicked TIE’s left wing, clipping it and sending the fighter into a wild spin. Poe’s shot blew clear past the fighter and obliterated one of the asteroids on the furthest edge of the field. It burst into a haze if dust and embers as the heat of the initial blast was choked out by cold vacuum. The TIE spun into another asteroid, shattering into thousands of parts and sending its clipped wing hurtling right at the X-Wing. Poe banked sharply away from the debris, but to avoid the wing he would have had to see the crash before it happened. It slammed into the joint of his top right foil and rolled back, biting into one of the thrusters and sending up an evanescent plume of fire. The X-Wing was pulled into a spiral. It was all Poe could do to keep the fighter away from the surrounding asteroids.  
  
    “BB-8, you okay?” He couldn’t hide the worry in his voice. The debris had come awfully close to the astromech dock. Even in a tailspin, he gave himself a relieved sigh when the droid beeped back over the flashing emergency alerts.  
    “Okay, buddy, can you get that thruster shut down so we can get back on track without plowing into an asteroid?”  
  
    Almost before he even finished saying it, the fighter started to level out, and status reports from the alerts panel told him the damaged thruster had been safely deactivated. It occurred to him, not for the first time, that without that little droid, he’d have been done for, long before he could knock out Skywalker’s record for kills in the infamous Rogue Squadron.  
  
    “Thanks, BB-8. I owe you another one. And sorry about that. Would have been a good time to have the Commander’s reflexes.” BB-8 replied with an assurance that General Organa’s timing was often statistically improbable, and a suggestion that he not feel too bad about it.  
    “Yeah, I guess you’re right. That’s why she’s the general, and I’m the pilot.” Poe carefully adjusted his course, taking them out of the asteroid field and pointing them toward the planet. If the patrols followed the usual pattern, they would make it to the surface long before anyone could investigate the missing squadron. “The pilot who should really stop insisting that he can do jobs like this with no support.”  
      
    The alerts panel flashed several times.  Poe chuckled and nodded. “Yeah, I know. You’re all the support I need, buddy.”  
  
    BB-8 seemed satisfied, and the panel dimmed as Poe adjusted the consoles to approach at just enough power to get them safely through the atmosphere. He kept the scanners active, just in case, eyes searching for the glint of First Order ships the whole way to the planet. It proved unnecessary. If not for the recent reports and the TIE fighter patrol they’d encountered, Poe might be able to convince himself that the planet was entirely uninhabited. But that was the point. As the X-Wing pushed into the planet’s atmosphere, the first massive wind front rocked the small fighter. Poe was sure he felt the temperature drop inside the cockpit. The canopy was washed out by howling white waves of snow. After a long descent, following his scanners very carefully, he felt the reassuring jolt of the landing gear touching down on semisolid ground. He sighed. Even knowing how dangerous the snowstorm could be, he always felt that nagging reluctance to leave his ship behind. It was never just landing. It was letting go.  
    The report from the scanners showed no contacts after a few minutes, and BB-8’s reports were equally uneventful. The alerts panel lit up with a few lines of text. Poe crossed his arms and looked out at the daunting maw of the snowstorm.  
    “Yep, I guess this is it. Doesn’t look like much, but I guess that’s why they picked it.” Poe took a breath and pulled off his pilot’s helmet. “BB-8...welcome to Hoth.” 


End file.
